Verona Beach
by R Reich
Summary: [postGoldenEye] Somehow Alec Trevelyan survived Cuba. James goes looking for answers amidst the colour and lights of Verona Beach and gets more than he bargained for.


**Verona Beach**

Verona Beach; like a run-down sideshow alley, cheap, trashy. Home to hedonists and whores, vagabonds and the impoverished, the castaway trash of humanity who clung to life on the beachfront in gleeful depravity. Amusement parks and the tourist dollar kept the seedy beachfront alive, the rich and vulgar mingling with the genuine poor on the sand day and night in a shameless dance of life, vibrant colour and gaudy, flashing lights.

He knew that Bond _should_ have looked out of place. He'd known it from the moment he had hung up the phone from agreeing to meet the MI6 agent at the Beach. Yet even as he idled time away under a brightly coloured umbrella out of the glare of the sun, a glass of equally lurid liquid cool in his hand, he watched James Bond, Her Majesty's faithful terrier, amble casually across the sand towards him looking every bit as much a part of the colourful scenery as the man ushering shrieking children across the sand to the water.

James Bond had a way of fitting in.

The light sound of wind chimes danced on the breeze that carried with it the teasing scent of summer; hints of flowers and dust and incense and the sweet curves of a woman. It made a pleasing counterpoint to the lingering tang of humanity, of litter and of the ocean that persisted on all but the windiest of days.

Without a word Bond settled into the chair opposite, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head. Almost as soon as his hand fell from his hair, a boy was at his side. The boy, olive skinned, dark-haired and who could be no older than 14, had emerged from the nearby bar, a pen and notepad clutched in thin hands with ragged nails. The boy took Bond's order – a martini, of course – and vanished as he had come.

The MI6 agent turned back to the table and raised his eyes to meet those of the other man. Eyes like the sky above, brightly clear and clean and distant. 'Alec,' he finally, maybe reluctantly, acknowledged the man who sat over the small grimy tabletop from him. 'Or Janus, still?'

The man known as Alec Trevelyan leant back in his chair, scrutinising the face of the man before him. As much as James Bond might dislike the fact, he had aged. While muscle had not yet started to run to fat – the strict training regime at MI6 could be held accountable for that – there were lines on his face that Alec didn't remember, and more than a few threads of silver thickening in his dark hair. 'I thought you would have known the answer to that question, when you called me to arrange this meeting.'

'Humour me,' James suggested thinly.

A woman called out to her partner who jogged across compacted sand towards her. Her voice was both sweet and coarse, her words indistinct over the distance, but her tone leaving no doubt to the insinuation of her words. She wore a bright pink and blue and yellow bikini, and Alec's eyes idly traced the curve of her belly. The wind toyed with her thick dark curls, and she vanished from view behind a stall selling cheap jewellery, the man disappearing shortly after.

'Janus is dead,' Alec said flatly, looking back to Bond. 'Alec Trevelyan is dead. It doesn't matter what you call me. As far as the world knows or cares Janus died in the destruction in Cuba, just as Alec Trevelyan died at Arkangel.'

'But you still live,' James challenged. He felt the urge to drum his fingers on the tabletop, a nervous habit he'd picked up from Alec of all people in the academy when they were both young and – at the time – idealistic, a habit he hadn't indulged in for many long years. Instead he gouged his thumbnail lightly under the peeling edge of the paint lacquering the tabletop.

'Indeed.' Dry as the sand beneath their feet, the bite of dust in the gust of wind that scoots across the sand. Dry like the rattle of empty snakeskin.

'You never fail to surprise me,' James said, 'with your persistence.'

Alec smiled at James, a feral baring of his teeth. 'What, you mean my persistence in living through whatever you might throw at me, James?' The last time he had seen Bond the MI6 agent had been looking down at him, before letting him go to fall to his death. _Cleansed of your demons, James?_ 'It must have been quite a shock for you to discover that I managed to live through even that.'

James raked his gaze over Trevelyan, noting the stiffness in his posture, the ill-favoured crook to the way he was seated, and the long sleeves and high, almost monastic collar of the plain white shirt he wore. He wondered at the scars that material concealed now. New scars James had never seen. 'A shock, yes...' He met Alec's gaze again. 'Though I don't imagine it would be difficult for me to finish you now.'

Alec leant forward, and because he was now looking for it, James saw the tightening of the muscles around Alec's pale eyes and the twist to his lips. His former colleague must live now in constant pain, James realised, and there was an uncharacteristic stab of guilt in that realisation. He had done what was needed of him by his country, and he very rarely regretted it. But Alec _had_ been his friend, and even now what had passed between them was a tender point. Bond had been calm and collected at the time, willing and able to kill someone who had once been as a brother to him. At the time it was simply duty – but the post-mission processing he never did deal with properly.

'Then do it, James,' Alec hissed. 'End it now, right here. Verona Beach. Make Verona Beach the place James Bond always remembers because it is where he finally saw my blood finally mark the sand. Get either one of those damn guns you're carrying out and _end_ it!'

'And have your-' James was interrupted by the reappearance of the bar boy. He placed a frosty martini glass down on the table, and waited patiently as Bond fumbled in his pocket before dropping a number of coins to cover both the price of the drink and a healthy tip into his silently extended hand. The boy vanished once more as James leant forward, glaring at Alec. 'And have your men kill me as soon as I draw my gun?' he picked up the conversation smoothly. 'You'd like that, Alec, wouldn't you? Since you couldn't kill me yourself.'

Alec's taut expression quickly dissolved to laughter, the genuine humour surprising James. 'You mean to say you don't know?' The cawing of a handful of gulls that had flown in and settled on the sand during their tense exchange punctuated his words. Somewhere loud music blared, a dissonant cacophony of the latest music to achieve popularity on the streets. 'You didn't plumb the vast resources at MI6 to find any scrap of information about me the moment you discovered I survived your second firestorm? Or was it that you never bothered to tell M you had found I was still alive? Surely you couldn't have used those resources to _just_ get my number!' Alec's laughter rang out again, strangely joyous, and he covered his mouth as his mirth dissolved into a brief but harsh coughing fit.

James' eyes widened when he saw the blood on Alec's fingers as he lowered his hand.

The other man swore huskily, and fumbled in the pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of his chair, drawing out a folded square of cotton stained in patches with the rust brown of dried blood. 'No James, I have no men to kill you. I have no command, no goal, no heinous plan for revenge or world domination. I have only my destiny to finish me. I'm just a crippled and lonely man, spending the last of my days and the remains of what little wealth I accumulated on frivolity and decadence I can no longer even enjoy.' Alec tucked the cloth away again, after wiping his fingers clean. 'You left me quite a legacy, James. Whether you put a bullet in my head now or not, you will have killed me. I suppose I should congratulate you, at least, for that.'

James bit his lip.

An elderly couple, both dressed very well-to-do and with the haughty yet secretly gleeful expressions of those who think they are slumming it, wandered over to a shaded table near the door to the bar. She made a comment which he laughed uproariously to as they seated themselves. Almost immediately the boy appeared, notepad once more clutched in narrow hands.

'Why did you want to meet with me, James?' Alec's voice was now tired. Brief humour had given way, and he felt wearied. He could remember a time when he had been more than happy to dance this path with James, an intricate choreography of jabs and spars and digs in a spiralling circle until they both met in the centre, exhausted but sated in their quest for intellectual superiority. It was rare for one to successfully best the other, but not unheard of. In this case Alec laid his surrender willingly at Bond's feet. 'Did you just want to confirm with your own eyes that I was alive? It wasn't enough to hear my voice?'

James sighed. He looked at the still untouched glass on the table in surprise, as if he had not expected it to be there. He glanced at Alec again. Fair-hair much longer than he was used to, green-eyes, scarred, jaded, broken.

So far removed from the face from their youth that was what he had always remembered whenever his mind sought to recall Alec Trevelyan. Not Janus.

'I don't know. I needed-' he paused and swallowed. 'I needed closure. I couldn't process what had happened,' he stumbled through the concepts and thoughts tumbling through his mind, 'I never dealt with killing _you_. It was just... just another mission for so long, just another mission. But at the same time it was _you_. It was Alec Trevelyan, my closest friend and confidant, and he'd _betrayed_ me, betrayed everything I thought we both believed in,' the words were tumbling free now, unchecked by the man who uttered them. A side of James Bond only Alec Trevelyan had ever seen. A side only _Alec_ would ever see. 'But at the same time he wasn't Alec, he was some – some malignant entity calling himself Janus, some immoral bastard who wanted to destroy my life as I knew it, destroy everything I cared about and believed in, _had_ destroyed the one person who was closer than blood and by god I wanted to _kill_ him for it.'

James shuddered, chafing his fingers together, his eyes vague. His hands twitched and the still-full martini glass was brushed from the table, falling with a soft thud to the sand, contents spilled. The moment of disclosure broken, James swore and went to move to pick up the glass but his movement was restrained by a hand gripping his with faltering strength. He jerked his head up to meet Alec's gaze. 'James.' There was pain in Alec's pale eyes, whether from James' words or his quick movement to take James' hand, the MI6 agent didn't know.

'Alec,' his name was a low noise of hurt. 'I needed to know if it was Trevelyan or Janus who had survived. I needed to know who it was that I killed.'

'Unusual. You were always "mission complete, no questions asked". Well, officially anyway. So tell me, since when has James Bond ever been concerned with the fallout?' The question was unaccountably bitter, and Alec regretted it as soon as he uttered it. James jerked his hand away from Alec's as if stung. 'I'm sorry,' Alec sighed. 'I shouldn't have said that.'

'No.' James shook his head. 'You shouldn't have. You know me better-'

Alec interrupted with a noise of negation. 'I _knew_ you. As you _knew_ me. Now we're strangers with a shared past.'

'A hell of a past,' it was James' turn to vocalise his bitterness. 'Any wonder I had trouble putting you away?'

Tortured. It was the only word Alec could think of to describe James at that moment. Tormented and haunted by a past that he couldn't let go of. 'Did you have closure _before_ you found out I still lived?' Alec asked roughly.

'Closure?' James barked a laugh. 'God, Alec, I've _never_ been able to put away your memory. I couldn't even before... before I found out you survived Arkangel.' He scrubbed a hand over his face.

'Then do it now, James. Put Alec Trevelyan, Janus, the betrayal and the lies away. I'm no threat to your national security anymore.' Turning with a wince and a huff of pain, Alec signalled towards the bar. Seconds later, the boy emerged and hurried towards them. He carried something long and slender in his hands, and James instinctively tensed. Wariness of the unknown was hammered into all MI6 agents, and even James couldn't turn of the instinct despite knowing the situation rendered it unnecessary. When the boy got closer he relaxed, realising that the boy carried a walking stick, elaborately carved, the patterns stained richly dark against the golden wood.

The boy inclined his head to Alec, offering the cane to him with mumbled words of honour. Gingerly Alec rose to his feet. He touched the boy on the shoulder, before slipping him some folded dollar bills of a high denomination. The boy slipped the money into his pocket with a nod, his eyes shining as he looked at Alec.

When Alec took the carved stick from the boy, his movements made with the studied and careful control one would see in the elderly or infirm. Which was what Alec was now, James finally fully realised as he pushed himself to his feet. The boy swooped on the glass on the sand and Alec's own empty, once more vanishing to the bar. The man James had once tried to kill swore under his breath as his walking stick slipped in the soft sand.

'Lean on my arm,' James offered, his voice suddenly unaccountably thick. 'I'll help you on the sand.'

Alec glared at him. 'I'm not a-' he trailed off, closing his eyes and sighing. _I'm not a cripple_. The futile lie Alec had been about to utter hung in the air. He'd already admitted his disability to Bond, so there was no point in lying about what he was and was not capable of.

'Where to?' James asked politely, as Alec leant on his arm. Alec was warm and alive, but when he coughed softly, James got the feeling that the life burning within the other man was like a candle in a breezy room, flickering and tempted to go out any minute. Fragile. There was something that was broken inside him, and it was all James' fault. Duty done for the greater good. The mission over the man. _Tell yourself that enough times, James, and you might actually start to believe it._

'Just help me to the pavement,' Alec said, 'I'll be alright from there.'

As James assisted Alec off the beach, a woman called out to them stridently from across the road. It was one of the prostitutes who worked the strip during the day, a surprisingly profitable endeavour for a balmy midday. She ventured towards them across the dusty blacktop before turning, hitching up the hem of her skimpy lace skirt to lightly slap her bared arse at them. The older whores who held court around the doorway to the flea-bitten brothel laughed uproariously.

The whore called out her offer again, only to be shooed off the road by the rapid approach of a gang of youths in an immaculate red convertible. Their music was loud and riddled with bass, yet light undertones suggested an ethnic flavour to the noise that Bond was sure the youths would not be aware of. The adolescents jeered loudly at the prostitutes, who in turn shrilled back insults debasing the boys' parentage and sexual habits.

'What was that about with the money?' James asked, settling his sunglasses once more over his eyes. Alec still leant on his arm, but he didn't think it worth mentioning, not when seeing Alec stumble along under his own steam hurt so much more than it should.

Alec grinned, a flash of youth behind disfiguring scars. 'His name is Julio, and he has four brothers and two sisters. His mother does what she can for her family. Julio tries to help out but the bar doesn't pay enough for his work to make much of a difference.' Alec shrugged. 'So I help out when I can.'

'You're a good man, Alec,' James said impulsively.

The breeze whipped long strands of golden hair over Alec's face and James knew the Beach was deep inside Alec. No one cared about who you might have been or what your past was at Verona Beach. It was a place where someone like Alec could lose himself and not fear that his past would look him up and hold him accountable for former deeds done. Except his past _had_ looked him up...

Alec snorted. 'You're an idiot.'

It was James' turn to grin. 'I do my best. Always.'

'Always,' Alec whispered, suddenly releasing James' arm. He shook his head, as if to shake loose the memories that suddenly clogged his throat. 'I'll be fine now,' he said huskily. 'Go home, James. You got what you came for.'

'Alec, we could go-'

'_No_,' Alec interrupted. 'I won't do this, James. I'm tired. I'm _cranky_. I need to have a nap. You _know_ there is nothing more for us to say to each other – not without creating more questions than we have answers for. You got the answers for the questions you wanted to ask, now go _away_. I don't want to see or hear from you again.' Alec knew he sounded petulant, but all he wanted was for James to leave so he could go home and try and drive this day out of his memory, whether with drink or some of the bountiful narcotics available on the beach strip, or both.

Seeing Bond made him remember too much that he wished to remain forgotten. He had come to Verona Beach to forget. And amidst the colour and the lights of the Beach it was even possible to forget who you were. He had been well on the way until Bond's phone call had shattered that hope.

James met Alec's gaze steadily, before nodding once. There was logic to what the other man said – to delve further into shared their past would be to open Pandora's Box. When Alec turned and walked slowly away, and James fancied he could hear the crunch of sand under Alec's feet. Sun shining off his halo of fair hair and the careful placement of the rubber-clad butt of his cane, a stiffly-moving silhouette against blue sky and golden sand and the tapestry of life and colour that was Verona Beach. He paused for a moment, watching his own past walk away from him, before turning smartly on his heel and striding back towards the car park where he had left his car.

The car-load of youths had moved on, and most of the prostitutes had wandered back inside, except for two who stood at the door, chain-smoking. His gaze wandered along the sides of the buildings, derelicts the most of them, taking in the gaudy graffiti, some well done pieces of art, others just tags scrawled repeatedly like visual pollution.

Suddenly he stopped.

James jingled his car keys in his pocket, glancing in the direction of the gleaming vehicle Q had foisted off onto him once before looking back in the direction Alec had gone. He swore softly. 'Damn you, Alec Trevelyan. I don't _care_ what you say. I can't go now!' With that he started back up the footpath after Alec.

Verona Beach; like a run-down sideshow alley, cheap, trashy. It always claimed its own, whether they knew or not.


End file.
